The Legend of the Lich Queen

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Dungeonlands is not reality. The GM sets a Words: Kevin Andrew Murphy.
scene in a fictional realm and the players play Edits: Aaron Acevedo, Richard T. Balsley.
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Illustrations: Aaron Acevedo, Chris Bivins,
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Art Direction, Design, & Layout: Aaron Acevedo,
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Mike Chaney.
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 The Legend of the Lich Queen
by Kevin Andrew Murphy
Trismaya the Storyteller. Trismaya the I had heard it first as a girl, in a dream, too old to
Fortuneteller. Trismaya the Mad. simply forget, too young to know the wisdom of holding
I have heard them all and more. my tongue or filling my mouth with an artful lie.

I am the teller of a thousand tales. The dreamer
of ten thousand dreams. The whisperer of a million
lies. And the prophetess of a single truth.
Your lies will catch up with you, child, my mother
always said.
The lies were not what worried me. The truth was.
My mother showed me both, telling me the tale
of Ninat, the spider goddess, who cast her dreams to
the world, floating away like spiderlings on gossamer
thread. Most of Ninat’s dreams were good. A few
were naughty, frightening children and even grown
folk. But none were real, only cobweb fancies.

4
 I should not have asked if any showed an
apocalypse of fire, the death of gods and men alike.
I was taken to seers and fortunetellers, aged
soothsayers and vain young priests. I learned that
while a few had enough glimmerings of the Sight
to read dim portents in cards or oracle bones, most
were charlatans of varying degrees of expertise–and
all of them cared more about my mother’s money
than they did about me or anything they might see.
Even the true oracles viewed it only as a trade.
So I learned to lie. I told my mother the most
soothing lies the false soothsayers had spun,
agreeing with her and them that it had just been a
wickedly snarled thread of Ninat’s dreamsilk; I had
already mostly forgotten it.
I did not forget.
The dream came again when I was twelve, its
revelations more specific and more awful. I will
not say I was ready for it. But at least I had a lie
prepared. I said my bleeding time had come upon
me and that was why I was pale and shaking.
The most believable lies are those that resemble
the truth.
I wish I had been in a state to remember more
of what my mother told me, for I could tell she
had rehearsed her speech, how proud she was of
me as her daughter, what great hopes she had for
me as a woman, how now that I was brideworthy,
she might honorably arrange my marriage, and
indeed, had fine prospects already in line.
They came to court, young and old, wise and
foolish, handsome and unfavored, but all with
some combination of wealth or the promise of
same through powerful familial connections.
I turned one aside then another, growing in both
beauty and the liar’s craft. My reasons were good or
bad, mercurial as the fluids in an alchemist’s alembic,
solid as stone or yielding as a dream. My fame grew
as an unwinnable beauty, for my mother, while a
wealthy cloth merchant, kept the custom that she
would not agree to a match that her daughter did
not favor, which only made me yet more desirable,
for the fame of the man whom I chose would be
joined with my own, he forever known as the one
who won Trismaya the Dreamer.
Three more suitors had been turned aside that
morning, and my mother, while noting that the
interest in me was still accruing, was becoming
bored with the game and fearing that others might as
well. It was then that I saw him. My dreams, though
I pretended them to be light and fanciful, were
in truth dark and awful, twisted as the gossamer
parachutes of Ninat’s most horrid broodlings.
But even the dolorous future of the spider
keepers did not show me the bright present. I had
seen his visage amid blood and fire, ashes and
memories, older, weary, battle-scarred, the lines in
his face etched in the acid of pain and true grief.
I was not prepared to see the earnest youth that
he had been, that he was, here, now, before me.
“Dorhendr...” I breathed, speaking the name
outside my dreams for the first time.
He looked at me shyly and smiled a child’s
smile, showing me the boy he had been before,
now catapulted into a man’s body, tall and broad-
shouldered, a man who would know torment and
pain and ruin...some of it at my hand.
I took his hands in mine. They were great things,
making me feel almost like a child again myself. I
felt none of the sword calluses that would be upon
them save those that all the sons of well born men
had from following the expectations of form. “I am
5
 sorry. So sorry. You will love me, though you should
not. I am more than a dream girl–I am madness
incarnate. I will be as good a wife to you as I can,
but I shall betray you for no reason that you will at
first understand. You will, in turn, betray others,
including the one who will love you as you truly
deserve. I am Trismaya, and I shall be many things,
but among them the author of your grief, and for
that I am truly sorry. Years hence, you will still not
understand, only forgive me, believe me, and follow
me to your doom once more.”
“What?” said his father. “What did she say, Dorhendr?
She speaks very softly and I am growing deaf.”
“She said that she promises to be as good a wife
as she can!” the young man boomed, smitten. “She
agrees to be my bride!”
My mother, who was not growing deaf, had
heard no such thing, but had wearied of me turning
down one suitor or another for trivial reasons. She
was more than glad that Dorhendr, son of Alsim
the Spice Prince, was apparently as mad as I was.
Together we could be suitably matched.
“Then let us let these two love birds get to
know each other while we work out the details
of the wedding and the bride price,” my mother
suggested sweetly.
“Bride price?” Alsim echoed. “I expected a dowry.
I have heard rumors that your daughter is mad.”
“Mad with love,” my mother lied, but that was
more the truth with Dorhendr.
As it turned out, there was neither a pride
price nor a dowry. Our families, merchants both,
settled on a lavish wedding, netting us many rich
gifts from those who wished to curry favor from
Dorhendr’s father, my mother, or both. The gifts
beggared description and more than a few personal
6
fortunes. Among them was one I had seen in my
dreams–my terrible, terrible dreams–a necklace of
moonstones as beautiful as if an angel’s tears had
been strung upon a silver string.
This was because one of them was exactly that,
the central pendant being the frozen tear of the
seraph Anat. The lesser droplets were from her
attendant choir of cherubim.
“Very fanciful,” my mother pronounced, reading
this same description from the accompanying
scroll, “yet I understand the Emir of Ralzim paid
a small fortune to the wandering fakir who sold
it, and that provenance alone makes it valuable
beyond common moonstones.”
“There’s nothing common about them,” I said
in rejoinder. “They are the tears wept by the angel
Anat and her choir when Ninat spun her tale of the
doom that is to come, stringing the angel’s dreams
onto the silver thread woven by Her and Her spider
keepers.” I gestured to my new husband. “Place the
string upon me, Dorhendr.”
He did as he was bade, in that and in all things.
We were happy for a span of years, or at least he
was, deserved as much. He became the popular young
merchant prince, I his beautiful and fashionably mad
young wife, throwing many fabulous parties as gaily
extravagant and profitable as our nuptials.
Dorhendr needed that happiness for the sorrow
that was to come.
Sorrow came in the form of a tear of jet, the
Mourning Stone, another of the tears wept by the
angel Anat. I knew this as well when I saw it on the
peddler’s blanket spread in the bazaar. The man was a
liar, weaving an improbable tale about how it had been
taken from the nest of a griffin by a wandering prince,
created as a jewel for him to remember his lost love.
 I knew better: It was the tear Anat wept the
morning after Ninat visited the seraph in her
dreams, wringing from her the tears for the
moonstone necklace. The tear of jet was crystalized
from the angel’s nameless sorrow from the dream
she could no longer remember. After it had fallen
to earth, it had passed about by far more mundane
means before it arrived on the peddler’s blanket.
Still, a good story is still worth a few coins. I
laughed and offered the peddler a handful of dinars
for his lies and a few more for the bauble, which I
found pretty and might suit my husband.
I left it on my pillow with a note, reminding him
of my words when first we met outside the realm
of dreams, my first meeting with him as a youth. I
gathered about me a few mementos–the masks of
the muses of comedy and tragedy he had gifted me
with on our first anniversary, a mocking play on my
oft repeated apology that I would make him laugh
now, but cry later; the patterned oracle’s scarf my
mother had bought me when I was a girl visiting
soothsayers; a platinum choker crafted by the finest
artisans of the age which complimented the string
of moonstone tears I never took off; and a lovely
time-worn lute, its wood stained and smoothed by
the hands of courtesans and meistersingers over
the years until it had come to be among my family’s
riches and I took it up as my own.
I went out into the world, spinning illusions
and dreams about myself at first so others would
not know me, telling tales in the bazaars and coffee
gardens and hearing more in turn, including the
7
 gossip of Dorhendr, the most favored young man
in the world becoming the most fallen, for the man
whose fortune is set by winning the beauty of the
age is ruined when he is abandoned by her.
Dorhendr had always given his love too freely
and was too honest for a successful merchant
anyway. A lie or two would have spared him. He
could have claimed I was abducted by bandits or
djinn, spirted away by wicked enchanters in dragon-
borne chariots, or even stolen by one of the gods
who walked among men with such frequency I had
met no less than five–though I was wise enough to
never reveal I had seen through their disguise, nor
did I tell three that I knew they were doomed.
My husband was doomed as well, by his honest
admission that I had left him and his honest grief at
that betrayal. He had felt that I was like a butterfly
and he had been honored that I had chosen to alight
on his finger. That I had flown away was a time he
had always feared would come, but he had heard
me talking in my sleep. He knew the dreams that
tormented me would never let me rest, trapped in
them like a butterfly in a spider’s web. So he did the
kindest thing he could: He cut me free.
His social contacts did the same with him and
far less kindly. Ruin came to the spice house until
he traded what was left for a great sword, hung the
mourning tear from the pommel, and set his way
on the warrior’s path.
I heard tales of his valor from gossips and
storytellers, those who plied the trade of exotic truths
and the woven word. It gave me joy for a brief time
when I heard he had joined forces with the shield maid
Elrahui, she of the fleeting smile and swifter blade. I
blessed her though I knew we would never meet, at least
while she lived. The tale of my betrayal of Dorhendr
had given him a dark fame, one only one who had lost
8
much and battled many could hope to heal. I knew she
knew him for the good man he was, and that she was
cursed to love him as he had loved me.
I wept when I heard that his pain and sorrow
had led him to betray her and the rest of his
company, and how, in her dying words, she had
forgiven him and he wept as well.
Dorhendr, my sweet youth, put on the armor of
penance and became the Grieving Guard, the Silent
Sentinel, the one who was meant to be nameless but
was not. Even in the stillness of the Great Necropolis
where he had pledged to stand vigil, effacing his
own name so he could remember the names of all
the others, reciting the litany of the fallen warriors
and the honored dead, their bones interred in
graves and vaults, their ashes in cinerary urns, the
names of those lost afield or asea engraved on empty
cenotaphs, even there the name of one pledged to be
nameless could not be forgotten–not when the tale
was so juicy and the gossips’ tongues could still wag.
Mine did as well, telling the tale of Dorhendr, the
Grieving Guard, and mad Trismaya, the betraying
beauty who had once been his wife–surely she
could not be myself!
Or could she?
A lie is more easily believed when it is gilded with
truth. In truth, courtesans and charlatans alike had
found it profitable to style themself as Mad Trismaya,
so who was I to say them no, especially when a crowd
of impostors made my truth so much easier to hide.
I met a few madwomen who thought they
were me as well. But their madness was slight,
for it scarcely strayed beyond the thought that
my waking life was their own. My dream life was
still my own, and in that I was truly mad and
truly cursed.
 I told other tales as well, ones recounted by travelers and those who had never left the cities of their birth, of
Tianet of the Wilds, greatest huntress of the age, who bore in her hand a bow set with a bloodstone tear. I knew it
to be another tear shed by Anat’s holy eye, a tear lamenting all the beasts that died so that others might live–truly
ironic since it was said that by its power and her skill, Tianet had slain at least
two of every beast that had ever been, even those monsters thought
to be unique. As the storytellers confabulated when the inevitable
child asked how she
could kill twice what
only existed once, the
answer was simple:
She had killed it in
both this world and the
next, the same monster
doomed twice.
This was truer than
most realized, for I had seen it in
my dreams.
In my dreams I had seen
another bearer of Anat’s tears,
Mabharo the Wanderer, also known
as the Heretic, the man who served
no god but had met all of them–an
easier feat than it might sound for the
gods were fond of walking in the guise
of mortals only to put aside their masks
like a child at a pantomime, revealing themselves
in all their glory or horror. They almost invariably
gained a convert to their cult if they didn’t take that
opportunity to exalt or destroy the mortal who had
seen them in their true form, transmuting
wretches into princes, or princesses
into garden slugs.
Mabharo was the “almost” in the “invariably.”
He was not quite as broken as myself, but only
just, for rather than being touched by Ninat, the
Weaver of Dreams, he had been touched by

9
 Pingalu, the Monkey Spirit, God of Mischief, of
whom many tales are told.
Mabharo’s was among the most amusing.
The tale, as the children liked to hear it, went
like this: One day Pingalu was wanting to work
some mischief, for he was always wanting to work
mischief, and thought that perhaps he would put on
the form of a man, walk the world, and find some
mortal to play with. A good number of the apes and
monkeys in his court had formerly been men or
women, converted to his worshipers and his favored
forms. But one who had never been a man, simply
a clever monkey named Mabharo, said to Pingalu,
“My god, you have made many men into monkeys,
but you are becoming almost predictable. Is it not
time you made a monkey into a man instead?”
“Perhaps it is,” Pingalu laughed. “Do you
volunteer? Never matter! You have no choice. I
volunteer you! Let the monkey become a monk!” So
said Pingalu, the Monkey Spirit, who was as fond of
puns as he was of mischief, transforming Mabharo
the monkey into a human monk–still barefoot.
“So, my new man,” asked Pingalu, “how do you
intend to work mischief to serve me?”
“Serve you?” echoed Mabharo. “Men do no
serve monkeys, not even monkey gods! I will go
seek a god who I find worth serving.”
Pingalu then realized he had worked his mischief
on himself, as he did so often in his tales–but he also
worked his mischief on the other gods, for Mabharo
was ever dissatisfied, visiting one god then the next,
surprising Selibe the goddess of beauty without her
make-up then finding Forekhrin, god of secrets, in
his supposedly secret hideaway.
Mabharo wandered, learning something of all of
them, gaining a small token from each, from the most
10
kind to the most terrible, for even the gods gossip,
and it was soon known who and what Mabharo
was–and while he might not have been the worshiper
of Pingalu any longer, no god wished to play too hard
with the plaything of the God of Mischief.
When Mabharo visited the angel Anat, she shed
the amber tear, and in it her grief for all the worlds
that had gone before this one, all the souls and
gods forgotten to time. Mabharo took it and used
it as the fob of his rosary, the chain he had strung
with the tokens gained from all the other gods he
met both before and after meeting Anat.
Anat also shed a fifth tear, this one a lapis
stone. My dreams revealed that it was borne by
one named Ayrawn, of whom not as many stories
were told, not because there were no tales to tell,
but merely because they were not the tales for the
marketplace or the souk, not stories that would set
fire to the hearts of children and casual listeners.
The tales of Ayrawn were more subtle as was she–a
casual mention by a scholar in a coffeehouse, a respectful
citation by a court wizard when listing those in the
arcane arts whose works he found exemplary, the same
from an alchemist perusing volumes at a bookseller’s
stall and pestering the harried merchant for one penned
by one known to be more than a charlatan.
Of all the known branches of the arcane arts, if
not the accepted master, Ayrawn was still considered
among the highest echelons, a storied polymath of the
arcane. It was even whispered by priests, who mostly
wished to claim some portion of her secular fame for
their divine learning, that she had gained the favor of
the wise angel Anat, who had gifted her with the blue
stone she wore at her brow. That granted her in turn
more than mortal wisdom, for how could any mortal
seek to know so much save with spiritual help?
 The priests cooed like doves or cackled like
old hens, but their divine wisdom, if envious, was
nonetheless true. As I said, I had seen the same in
Ninat’s dreams, the vision of the blue tear, the fifth
of Anat’s talismans that concerned the doom of the
world but also its salvation.
And so, in the manner of vain storytellers since
time immemorial, I found a place to slip myself
into another’s narrative and did.
I arrived at the gates of the great hall of wizardry
and the arcane arts. I shall spare you the superlative
descriptions of its glory and its grandeur, for they
have been listed by others before. There were
books and scrolls as one might expect; alchemical
experiments bubbling away; strange things mewling
in cages, hybrid monstrosities created by the arcane
arts or mysterious cryptids brought to the laboratory
for further study; mechanical devices of unknown
purpose, more alarming for the fact that they were
plainly made, designed for cold functionality rather
than ostentatious gearing; more curiosities and
wonders than one might think the world could hold
if you had not traveled as widely as I had.
This was the private study of Ayrawn that I was
brought to by the gnomelike servant, a twisted
mannekin that the wizardess might have found in
the depths of the earth or grown from a mandrake
root. I did not know which, for my dreams had been
unclear on the subject, but I knew its mistress had
called it a Verger. I had used this name to get it to
take me to her: “Verger, take me to your mistress.”
“She knew my name, mistress!” the creature
complained. I did not know if it were male or female,
or again, if this even mattered. “She knew my name!”
11
 “Indeed,” said the wizardess, standing, “and
that I find impressive, for I had not yet published
my discovery of this race. How might I know you?
What name would you like to be called?”
“Most call me Trismaya the Mad.”
She regarded me cooly, then her eyes narrowed
and she wove the fingers of one hand in an arcane
sign. “The original. I see. The stories tell of a mad
beauty in her first blush of womanhood, but the
stories have been about for some time. I should not
reasonably expect you to still have the blush of youth.”
“Most do,” I said. “It is a useful disguise.”
“So what brings the celebrated and multiple
Trismaya to this scholar’s humble study? I am not
the most storied or most gloried of those who
pursue the arcane arts.”
“You are not the most storied because you
have not sought it. Your life to this point has been
prologue: Your greatest achievements lie before
you, not behind. And you are not gloried by the
common folk because again you have not sought it.
You have the respect of the most learned scholars,
and that for the moment is enough, even though
you hold such power that you could be a queen if
you so desire.”
“And be regarded as a usurper who stole a
kingdom or an upstart who married into one.” She
laughed lightly. “I would have to create a whole new
world to be regarded as a rightful queen by subjects
fit to rule.”
“That is precisely what I propose,” I said. “A
whole new world. We must create one, for this
one will be ruined by the Coming of Austra.”
“I know of no ‘Austra,’” the mage said clearly,
“and you have something of a reputation as a

12
fraud and a charlatan–or at very best a madwoman replacing it with a common iron kettle. It swiftly
who no one in her right mind would trust.” came to a boil. She poured it into a china pot and
“Do you trust your own divinations?” then, as the leaves steeped, I began to tell her my
dreams, of how the world would end in blood and
“As much as I must,” Ayrawn allowed. “Demons
fire, how Austra, Goddess of Fire, would arise from
lie for it is their nature, the dead can only be
the earth itself, how the cataclysmic eruption of
compelled to reveal what they knew in life,
magma and flames which accompanied her birth
which is not necessarily the truth, and the omens
would reshape continents, the pyroclastic cloud
glimpsed in tea leaves are open to interpretation.
incinerating cities, men and gods alike perishing
Yet enough, taken in cross consultation, can yield
in the firey cataclysm.
a composite image, a prognostication which, while
not necessarily a true image of the future, bears I told her also of Dorhendr, who bore the
such a high likelihood of coming to pass that only Mourning Stone, the jet pendant I had gifted him
a fool would ignore it.” with at our parting, the one he still wore as the charm
depending from the pommel of his greatsword as
“It is just so with my dreams,” I said. “I see
he stood vigil at the Great Necropolis. I told her of
matters from many angles, and when I approach
Mabharo, the monkey now a man, who bore his
them in the mortal world, I see them from yet
rosary of the gods he had seen with his own eyes
another perspective. Yet each vision is true, like
but never felt worth of his worship, and the amber
seeing someone from a distance from the side,
tear he had gained from his visit with the angel
then seeing them again closely face to face.”
Anat. I told her of Tianet, she of the bloodstone
“And evidently you foresaw that I would be
bow, the greatest huntress of the age, who, it is said,
free this morning and looking for a new avenue of
could both kill a beast and bring it back to life, for
arcane inquiry. Very well then. Do you take tea?
where was the sport if the greatest trophies could
Would you like to read your omen in leaves on
never be taken again. And as I did, I drank my tea,
porcelain, or would it suffice for me to do so?”
showing her how the omens in the bottom of my
“Aside from dreaming, my preferred method
cup gave extra insights to the visions I had seen
is casting beads, though in this we both bear the
and illustrated the tale I told.
favor of Anat.” I dandled the greatest pendant of
“A pretty parlor trick, I will grant you that,” the
my moonstone necklace, pointing it for a moment
mage pronounced, but then, after reading her own
towards the lapis tear set in Ayrawn’s circlet. She
tea leaves, consulted her books of ancient lore and
gasped. I merely stroked the strand of angel’s tears
modern philosophy, talked with the bronzed and
and silver spidersilk. “But tea would be lovely,
mummified heads of sages and scholars past, cast
thank you.”
powders into her brazier to summon wise afreet and
A mage, especially one who conjures demons
demons of knowledge terrible in both aspect and
and djinn, is made of stern stuff. She regained
name, and finally mixed an elixir of poppy gum and
her composure, removing an alembic filled with
the resins of desert cacti, breathing the fumes from
strange substances from a charcoal burner and
her retort until she fell into a drugged stupor.

13
 The hour was late and I was tired as well. I “I have never beheld it from this angle, but I
reclined upon Ayrawn’s spare divan and swiftly expect it is the birth of Austra.”
joined her in a new vista of the familiar nightmare. She nodded, then gestured to her
We stood on the parapet of I believe telescope, inviting me to look. I
the wizard’s tower, a great telescope perceived from
bolted to the stones no doubt the gesture that
for the mage to scan the stars, his was a rare
partaking of the twinned honor, that
sciences of astronomy and the telescope
astrology. But instead, the in her
telescope was pointed to the
distance where fire fountained
into the air. Ayrawn, wearing
a far grander gown than the
scholar’s robes she had received
me in, the royal raiment of a wizard
queen, bent over the telescope, her
eye to the eyepiece, her other
screwed tight, her lips pursed in
consternation.
“Do you believe me now?”
I asked.
She stood bolt upright,
looking at me in shock as had
other dreamers when I had
breached their private dream
sanctum, the spot where they felt
the most comfort and seldom, if ever,
entertained guests.
“How–” she began on reflex,
but then nodded. “Trismaya the
Dreamer. Another of your epithets.
Very well then. I believe you. I trust
you have seen what I see through the
telescope.”

14
dreams was matched by one in her observatory
tower in reality, one where she seldom took guests.
But the crystals and mirrors revealed what I had
seen before, the birth of Austra, if here witnessed
from a safe distance...for the moment.
“As you have said, I have seen this vision before.
Austra is born, but will soon walk the land, leaving
molten footsteps in her wake. Even this remote
mountain will not be safe, for the great library of
wizardry will burn.”
“All of it?” gasped Ayrawn, her face showing
the first trace of horror disrupting her wizardly
composure.
“That is not for me to say,” I said. “I place the
decision entirely in your hands, for if we are to
create this other world you spoke of, would you
not fill it with all of the lore and learning that is
here, all of the arts and sciences of the age?”
“An archive,” she said automatically. “Yes. Yes.
That is wise. There is time?”
“That I cannot say either,” I admitted. “I have
seen this vision many times in Ninat’s dreams, but
I only know that it will come to pass, not precisely
when. But I feel it will be soon.”
“The stars,” Ayrawn pointed to them, “are they always
in the same place in the sky in this terrible dream?”
“I–” I was at a loss for words. “I have never
considered the question. I have always been watching
the cataclysm. But now that you mention it, yes.”
Ayrawn swore like a street urchin, cranking
her telescope and swinging it about to observe
the heavens. “There is very little time–very little
indeed! How do we create this new world? I know
a method, but it would require the power of the
gods, and more than one, and we have little time to
convince them!”
“Fortunately,” I said, “another has already been
visiting them, being gifted with crumbs of their
divinity, and I know where his dream self resides.
Take my hand and I will lead the way.”
The dreaming mage extended her hand after but
a moment’s thought, then watched in wonderment
as I reached to the wall of her wizard’s tower and
parted it as if it were no more than a cobweb
curtain–though this is all it was in truth, for such
is the stuff from which Ninat weaves her dreams.
We stepped behind the walls of dreams and
nightmares, stepping along the familiar pathways
of the great web, taking occasional detours to avoid
the spider keepers, Ninat’s broodlings, who take
exception to dreamers stepping behind the scenes
of their artfully woven tapestries. Yet soon we were
at the one I desired. I pulled the silken cord, lifting
the backdrop just far enough for Ayrawn to enter
the scene, an idyllic glade on a lovely isle filled with
passion flower vines. A young monkey sat on the
ground, happily eating the perfumed fruit.
“Mabharo,” I presumed.
He looked at me, shocked, dropping the rind,
then rose up, his chattering giving way to human
words as his dream form shifted from his childhood
memory to his present shape. “What are you doing
here? This is my place! And you two are no gods I
have ever seen before!”
“No,” admitted Ayrawn, “but I take it that you
are Mabharo the Wanderer, also called Mabharo
the Heretic, and the children’s stories are true:
You are a monkey whom Pingalu uplifted for his
amusement.”
“What of it? Pingalu does everything for his
amusement! Who are you?”
15
 “You may as well know me as Ayrawn the Mage.
My companion is Trismaya the Dreamer, also
known as Trismaya the Storyteller. She has a tale
to tell....”
And so I did. Mabharo took far less convincing
than Ayrawn, concluding, “Very well. Since we
have little time, I will recruit Tianet. She has no
respect for men, or women for that matter, but
she will listen to animals. She speaks to me for she
considers me a poor beast cursed to an unnatural
shape. The story of you and Dorhendr is well
known, so I suggest you go and convince him. I
and Tianet will meet you at the Great Necropolis.”
“And what shall I do?” asked Ayrawn.
Mabharo waved dismissively. “Pack your
books, sorcerer. Your bottles and experiments.
Any worldly thing you think should be saved. I do
not even need shoes.” He plucked a passion fruit,
biting into it and sucking the jellied seeds with the
manners of a monkey. “I will need to speak with
Tianet about the plants as well, for these certainly
should be saved from this rude new goddess.”
With that, he vanished, the dreamer awakening.
A moment later, the world went dark, for when a
dreamer’s private tapesty is not in use by its rightful
owner, the spider keepers fold it up and put it away.
I was used to this rude form of awakening, so
merely yawned, sitting up on the divan as Ayrawn
gagged and hacked up the bitter phlegm of cacti
and poppy fumes.
After mad planning and harried sleep but true
sleep, she set to packing. Djinn were summoned,
ones who could build a castle in a day or move
one in an instant, turning a voluminous citadel
into smoke and hiding it in miniature in a tiny
bottle. Demons were summoned as well, imps
16
to spy, inky little scribes to copy books the mage
begged, borrowed, or outright stole from the
collections of fellow magi and the libraries of
kings and princesses. Only the whirlwind frenzy
of her gathering of anything and everything that
might be of human worth prevented Ayrawn from
suffering the wrath of her fellows, for wizards and
alchemist are patient and subtle and generally take
time to calculate the harm done to them and plot a
fitting and lasting revenge.
Time was what they did not have.
I, too, wished I had more. I had rehearsed before
what I would say to Dorhendr, how I would say it,
what my apology would be. Instead it all came out
in a blubbering rush of panic.
He held me, stroking my hair, my face to his
breastplate where once it would have been to his
bare chest as I woke from another of my nightmares
and he soothed me to sleep, telling me it was only
a dream. “Do not worry, Trismaya. I believe you. I
have always believed you. The only time anything
has gone wrong is when I did not believe in myself.”
He looked to the others, Tianet with her bow,
barefoot Mabharo with his rosary and monk’s
staves, Ayrawn with the plunder of the age
compacted into a scholar’s satchel and a collection
of bottles. Dorhendr’s words were for Mabharo
and were plain and simple: “Do what you must,
monk. Take as much of the Necropolis to this
new world as you can, for we cannot let the dead
be dishonored by the coming of this blasphemous
Austra.”
Mabharo nodded. He discussed arcane theory
with Ayrawn until the monk, who knew more gods
than my mother knew merchants, began to twirl
his rosary like a bored child would twirl a bauble
on a string. It was blasphemy, for on the chain were
the signs and sigils of hundreds of gods and angels,
patron spirits and demon lords alike. Then the
signs began to glow and Mabharo’s purpose was
made clear.
The rosary spun out in a circle, becoming wider
and wider, but what was glimpsed on the other
side was not the outer wall of the Necropolis but a
great void of stars, a swirling galaxy like one seen
in the nighttime sky from a mountain peak, but
moving like a maelstrom. Then an eye cleared in
it and that spread out as well, revealing a familiar
vista–the idyllic isle with the passion fruit bower.
“Behold,” said Mabharo, grinning, then
chattered like a monkey. “The Isle of Paxectel,” he
translated, “as humans would call it. It is from my
mother’s stories, a tale older than humanity, the
place where all good little monkeys go.”
“How long will the portal hold?” Ayrawn asked.
“I do not know,” Mabharo admitted. “I have
never called on all the gods for such a favor before.”
“Then we must work quickly.” Tianet strung her
bow. “I shall place the animals. They were here first
and shall go first.” So saying, she vaulted through
the portal, transported as if on falcon’s wings to the
pretty bower. She swiftly loosed two arrows which
transformed midflight to two great flightless birds
which took off at a run.
Ayrawn twisted her ring, summoning one
of her most powerful djinn. “I have a wish,” she
pronounced. “I wish that this Necropolis and all
in it, alive and dead, above and below, every last
stone, urn, and statue, all that is here in the
mortal world and the spirit world as well, be
transported and transplanted safely to that
spot on that isle there.” She pointed through the
portal to the Isle of Paxectel.
“As you wish, O worthy one,” said the djinn.
A whirlwind arose, a rumbling of the stones, the
djinn racing about, before, above, below, between.
Perspective skewed, the whirling signs of the gods
passing overhead like the zodiacal band of a madly
spun astrolabe, and then, abruptly, Mabharo was
pulled through at last, the immense hole in the
sky shrinking from a rent as wide as the eye could
see to an immense wheel as wide as a mountain is
high and smaller and smaller until Ayrawn cried,
“Hold! Djinn, for my second wish, I wish you to
freeze the monk’s portal there where it is, keep the
power there where it is, but erect a stone arch about
it with charms set such that we can turn its power
to any world we wish
to visit.”
“Your wish is
my command, O
worthy one,”
said the
djinni
of the
17
 ring. In a trice, a circle of stones was framed about
the portal, stretching the fabric of magic tight like
a cloth caught in my mother’s embroidery hoops.
Mabharo’s rosary fell slack, again its usual size
depending from his hand. We stood, as before, just
outside the gates of the great Necropolis, in the
field reserved for the slightly less honored graves.
Yet the sun overhead hung in a different place in
the sky and outside the swatch of manicured lawns
where the summoning portal now stood lay the
lush greenery of the monkey child’s paradise.
Ayrawn observed the isle with an architect’s
eye. “There should properly be a cathedral there, a
library there, and of course, there on the highland,
is where we shall erect our palace.”
She had the manner of one used to being
obeyed. Her djinn and demons unpacked her stolen
buildings. Her bottled minions, her Vergers, took a
machine that looked like a puzzle box, unfolding it
on the rise as it grew greater and greater, burrowed
and drilled. “I have put some thought into this,”
Ayrawn explained. “If we are to have a palace, it
should be reconfigurable. It would be inconvenient
and dangerous to have to summon a djinn whenever
you wished to simply rearrange a room, so this will
save a great deal of trouble. You shall all be given
suites of rooms to decorate as it pleases you.”
“Who is going to live in a palace with so many
rooms?” asked Mabharo. “There are only five of us.”
“For now....” Ayrawn smiled and gestured to
the walls of the Necropolis. “We’ve brought a great
many others, and I have unraveled the secrets of
alchemy and necromancy. What is dead today may
be alive tomorrow.”
What Dorhendr said next cut me to the heart.
“I might see Elrahui again?” he whispered. “The
18
rest of my shield brothers and sisters? Beg their
forgiveness?”
“You might have done it long before now, if
that tear of jet is what I think it is.” She pointed to
the Mourning Tear depending from his sword, the
token I had left him at our parting.
“This?” he said, touching the memento.
“Yes, that,” she agreed. “Did Trismaya tell you
nothing of its power? Never matter. I shall instruct
you–but I promise, you shall see your loved ones
again. Yet for now, let us set things in order. There
is much to see to now in our new demesne.”
And so we did. Ayrawn had her djinn and
Vergers, her clockwork machinery and her arcane
arts, recreate for me a replica of my mother’s
spinning room, the pleasant chamber in her grand
house where I used to sit and imagine I had been
born to a simpler life and a more common fate than
what was mine and what my dreams portended.
My dreams, for once in my life, portended
nothing. When I fell asleep, I became aware that the
djinn, crafty creature that it was, had interpreted
Ayrawn’s wish literally. When the Necropolis had
been transported to the Isle of Paxectel, a swatch of
the spirit worlds had been transported along with it.
A group of Ninat’s spider keepers wove frantically
about, trying to repair the web of dreaming and
recreate a suitable set of tapestries for those who
slept here now. The Isle, however, was cut off from
Ninat and her guidance.
I had long wished to be free of the dark
prophecies, but it was strange to be without them.
Had my mother perished? Had Ninat perished?
Had the awful Austra come, stamping her molten
footsteps across the earth, blanketing the world in
her mantle of magma?
 Or had some survived? Had the wizards and alchemists, necromancers and sorcerers alike, set
on edge by Ayrawn’s theft of rare volumes, priceless artifacts, and ancient curiosities, become
ready to deal with the goddess? Had the priests, bewailing the loss of the Necropolis, alerted
the gods, some of whom may have survived who otherwise might not have?
In truth, while I knew that gods would die, I was only certain of a few, and now
not ever that seemed sure. If a memento were left of a god,
like the trinkets on Mabharo’s rosary, filled
with some portion of the god’s divine power
and given to one who remembered their names,
could any of them truly be dead? Or could they, as
Ayrawn promised Dorhendr, be brought back like those
remembered in the litany of names from the Necropolis?
The question was moot. We found Mabharo the next
day. He had been about the isle, placing his icons of the
gods in rustic shrines, at least the ones he hadn’t placed
in the large and somewhat garish cathedral Ayrawn had
had arise from the rock, with the grand shrine to Lady
Trinity, patron of women, wizardesses included, as well
as numerous niches for the images of less favored
divinities.
The last of these, the statuette of Pingalu,
Spirit of Monkeys and Mischief, was
perched in the crook of a banyan
tree in Mabharo’s favorite
bower, the one made in
the image of the one
from his monkey
mother’s cradlesong.
His body lay on the
ground, the rinds of
his favorite passion
fruit in his hands.
“He must have been
stung by a basilisk,” Ayrawn
pronounced, turning to Tianet.

19
 “You released so many venomous creatures on the
island, it’s small wonder he succumbed to poison.”
“Who said anything of poison?” said Tianet. “I
did not. I told all the animals who had it to stay
away, and all the plants that have it are in their
proper places.” She took an arrow and speared one
of the passion fruit rinds, bringing it to her nose
and sniffing. “The skin has been smeared with
the oil of Ignatius seeds. This is not the action of
animals, or even the natural activity of plants. This
is the work of man.”
“Who could have done such a thing?” asked
Dorhendr.
“One of you three. I neither know, nor care,
which. The only man I trusted on this isle is
now dead, and the only reason I trusted him was
because he had been born a beast.”
“You cannot leave now,” Ayrawn protested.
“What of the coming of Austra, the doom that was
to come to our world?”
“A doom prophesied by one who goes by
many names, among them ‘Trismaya the Liar.’”
She looked me straight in the eye and retrieved
an arrow. “I trust none of you three, but least of
all you. I should kill you now. But no doubt you’ll
have your love-smitten swordsman or the mage
you have wrapped around your fingers make an
end of me, so I’ll save you the trouble. I will leave,
through the portal Mabharo made and the djinn
froze.” She smiled a deadly smile, pointing her
arrow straight at my heart. “I would advise you to
follow soon–but to some other world. Once I leave,
my control over the beasts will vanish. You will be
left to fend for yourself against the manticores and
basilisks, the jub-jub birds and the creeping things
without a name. And if I die now? Well....”

20
 As she said this the hissing things, the creeping
things, the sharp-beaked birds and the silent-
padded cats crept out of the forest, surrounding
their mistress as her honor guard, following her to
the Summoning Portal where she placed her hand
upon the stone, pronouncing, “I would return to
my world now. Open your portal to me, thing of
gods and stone!”
The portal opened. Fire blasted out, lava flowing
through, forming a great pool which Tianet fell
into, crying out, holding her bow aloft to save it
from the flames.
“Djinn,” cried Ayrawn, “I wish to save her!
Preserve her! Seal the portal and freeze the stone!”
“It will be as you wish, O worthy one,” said
the djinn of the ring, “but with this service, your
dominion over me is done!”
A great whirlwind came up, pulling water
from the sea and dousing the molten rock. Great
clouds of steam roiled forth, blasting every which
way, carrying with them Tianet’s treasured arrows,
scattering them about like the quills launched by a
blind manticore. Then the steam cleared. “Behold!”
cried the djinn, its windy form in the appearance
of flesh once more. “The huntress lies preserved,
beyond all harm from you or any other thing! The
stone is frozen, the portal is shut, and I am free!”
With a thunderclap, the djinn vanished. It was
as he said: The portal was sealed, whirling once
more with the colors of a thousand worlds; the lava
was frozen, turned to elegantly worked stone; and
raised on a stone bier of what would have been her
pyre was Tianet, untouched, now surrounded by a
golden glow. The beasts that crawled and crept and
padded and flew shied away from it, each taking
up one of the arrows borne by its former mistress,
bearing them away in their beaks or jaws to the
privacy of the wilderness.
The ring on Ayrawn’s finger fell away into
golden dust, drifting away with the breeze towards
the sea.
Dorhendr looked to me, then Ayrawn, then
turned his head back to the Necropolis, as if
hearing something only he could hear. “Erahui!”
he cried. “I am coming! I am coming!”
I tried to cry out to warn him, but a spell stilled
my tongue. Another bound my feet.
Ayrawn smiled, then paced over to Tianet’s
sleeping form, lifted the archer’s enchanted bow,
and pried out the bloodstone tear that was its
sight. She smiled further as one of her Vergers,
the twisted homonculi who did her bidding, came
forth from the bushes and presented her with
Mabharo’s amber tear.
She then strode into the Necropolis to where I
knew Dorhendr must lie.
I felt her spell slip away from my feet and tongue,
and I ran after. I do not know what rash thing I
thought I might do, for my craft was in prophecy
and guile. I knew that the man who was once was
my love was doomed, betrayed by his trust in me
twice, but even so, it was like the first time I beheld
his face in the present world. I was not ready.
The first time I saw Dorhendr, all the dark
dreams of my young life had not prepared me to
see his young, guileless, trusting face, the one I
knew I could not help but doom.
Now older and even more steeped in prophecy,
I had not steeled myself to see him dead, his
lined and battle-scarred face frozen into a mask
of horror and betrayal. The dried fingerbones of
Elrahui’s corpse were around his neck, the scattered
21
 bones of his fellow shield men and women scattered around them, the
necromancer having banished their shades back to wherever she had
summoned them from.
“One should avoid killing anything personally,” Ayrawn observed.
“The spirits of the dead are so easy to tempt to vengeance, but they
tend to strike at the one who did the deed, not the one who
brought them to this pass.” She took the tear of jet from
the pommel of Dorhendr’s fallen blade. “You would know
something of that, wouldn’t you, Trismaya?”
“I knew you would say that,” I said. “You’ve rehearsed that
little speech many times, said it to many others before, and I
have seen it many times before in my dreams.” I took the
Mask of Tragedy from my waist, comparing it to poor
dead Dorhendr. Even he had some gift for prophecy.
“If you will allow me?”
I placed the mask over Dorhendr face, where it
fit as if made for him. Perhaps it was.
“So do you know what I plan?” asked
the wizardess. “Do you even care? I
must admit I do not understand you,
Trismaya, for I have never been able
to fathom madness.”
“You will have time,” I said. “All
the time you need. I know your
plans. An alchemist hungers for
immortality. Some of them even
achieve it. But you, vain thing,
wanted more. You wished to
be a master of all magics, a
queen for all time, a veritable
goddess without the tedious
business of worship and
seeing to your followers–for
you do not want worshipers, you
want playthings. The angel Anat saw in you the
seeds of greatness, granting you her lapis tear and with

22
it wisdom, but not an angel’s holiness or kindness.
You hungered for more. When you found she had
granted other tears to other mortals, you saw your
chance to take them. Now all you need is mine.”
I held it forth, the last and greatest tear on my
necklace. I had scattered the lesser tears about as
I went about my day on the isle, as I had seen I
would do, as I knew I must do, but I did not know
why. “Take it, Ayrawn. Take it and be damned!”
Haughtily the wizardess took the tear. “You are a mad
fool, Trismaya, and while I still do not know your game,
why don’t you tell me mine if you know it so well?”
“You have a grand machine,” I said. “A prison
and puzzle box and tomb all rolled into one. You
will place the tears into it and use their power to
imprison Anat once you lure her here and subdue
her with your sorceries. Then you will drink her
immortality, feeding her with the endless bounty
of souls of those here in the Necropolis and those
you lure from other worlds. You will become a lich,
but style yourself a queen, resurrecting whatever
of the honored dead amuse you to serve as your
courtiers in a mockery that will seem a splendid
afterlife but in fact will be a chamber of horrors
as you refresh your court occasionally with the
ancient dead or exotic strangers you lure through
and ensorcel with your charms. And when your
playthings no longer amuse you? Well, you can
savor their essence and lure in something fresher.”
Ayrawn laughed. “And now, I suppose, is the
part where you say that you will stop me.”
“No,” I said, as I knew I would, “I will not. You
are a necessary evil. Anat’s torture is a necessary
evil. The drinking of souls, heinous as it is, is
a necessary evil. These things must be for the
wonders of our age to be preserved, and who better
to preserve them than a jealous undying guardian, a
vainglorious wretched hag who would overturn all
of creation for one more minute of her unholy life?
But while you will not change, the worlds will, and
in time a necessary evil will become unnecessary.
A hero or a villain, or a fool or a stranger, lured
here by your wealth and vanity, called by the cries
of a tortured angel, or simply stumbling through
an unknown door, will come here and end you, by
skill, by luck, by fate, or some combination of all
three–and all the wonders that you have kept will
flow back into the world, for they are necessary.
But you? You are not.”
I smiled at my enemy. “That is the storyteller’s
curse, Ayrawn. Every villain will perish, and every
story has its end. Even yours. Even mine.”
But I laughed inwardly for I had scattered my
moonstones.
A lich may be difficult to kill, but the hardest
thing to kill is a dream.
23